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From UK new wavers Soft Cell turning Gloria Jones’ 1965 song “Tainted Love” into an everlasting hit, to academia rockers Vampire Weekend taking on Robin Thicke’s current contender for song of the summer, “Blurred Lines,” cover songs are, and have always been, an intrinsic component of the alternative music landscape.

Cover songs have the power to introduce music from another genre or era to an unfamiliar audience. A great cover song prays on the listener’s love of the familiar, while at once creating something completely new. One of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ earliest breakout moments came with their raucous version of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 classic, “Higher Ground.” Soundgarden earned major cred in the early ’90s by covering two rock movie favorites,”Big Bottom” from This isSpinal Tap and Cheech and Chong’s “Earache My Eye” from Up in Smoke. Jimi Hendrix covered “All Along The Watchtower” so well that Dylan starting playing it the way Hendrix played it.

What makes an effective cover version is not an exact science. For some, a radical reworking across genres is what makes them special. For others, it’s by staying true to the original and simply updating a song for the next generation of listeners. While some of these versions have never hit the charts or been featured in a major motion picture, they’re all inspired takes that deserve to be heard.

These are ten of the most essential alternative cover songs of them all.

10. Matt Sweeney/Zwan: Iron Maiden, “Number Of The Beast”

If you woke Iron Maiden’s lead singer Bruce Dickinson up in the middle of a deep REM cycle and immediately shuffled him onto a stage with an acoustic guitar, he would still put more vim and vigor into it than Matt Sweeney, guitarist for Zwan, did in this narcotic version of the metal standard for the movie Spun soundtrack. Though Sweeny drains the blood and fantasy from the original, he also drains all the camp, leaving just a skeleton of original. It highlights the desolate country-western tune that lurked beneath it all the while, and instead of conjuring up some oversized fire-breathing devil — Sweeny it succeeds at conjuring something far more sinister.

9. Bon Iver: Bonnie Raitt, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”/”Nick of Time”

For the B-side to his 2011 single “Calgary,” Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon weaved Bonnie Raitt‘s “Nick of Time” into the tail-end of “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” though that’s not what makes the whole thing stand out. While Raitt’s 1991 hit has been covered by everyone this side of American Idol, “I Can’t Make You Love Me” has never sounded quite as vulnerable as Vernon wills it to be. With just the piano and his falsetto, the bareness makes lines like, “You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t,” inescapable.

After winning an Oscar for his soundtrack to film The Social Network, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor again teamed up with director David Fincher to make movie music magic for the big-screen adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s 2005 novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. While much of the soundtrack is moody and ambient, Fincher suggested that Reznor take on this classic 1970 Led Zeppelin song. “That was David coming to me and saying, ‘What do you think about a version of this?’” Reznor told the L.A. Times. “I wouldn’t have thought of it. But I don’t think of it in terms of how he sees it in the film, and he doesn’t always explain himself. You learn to fill in the blanks.” Produced with longtime Reznor collaborator Atticus Ross and featuring Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O on vocals, the final result is a brutal, industrial-tinged reading that serves the film perfectly.

7. Aimee Mann: Harry Nilsson/Three Dog Night, “One”

Originally written by Harry Nilsson for his 1968 album Aerial Ballet, “One” was made famous as a No. 5 hit from Three Dog Night the following year. At the risk of being sacrilegious, our favorite version is by Aimee Mann. Hers owes more to Nilsson’s original than the Three Dog Night hit, and indeed, she recorded it for a 1995 tribute album, Everybody Loves Harry. Director Paul Thomas Anderson brought the cover to light in the opening sequence of Magnolia, and filled the film’s soundtrack almost exclusively with Mann originals. Where Three Dog Night turns the song into a sweaty soul workout, Mann sings with a sigh, reserved to the fact that one is the loneliest number, but she’s gonna have to get used to it.

6. Cowboy Junkies: The Velvet Underground, “Sweet Jane”

Written by Lou Reed, “Sweet Jane” was first released on the Velvet Underground’s fourth album, 1970’s Loaded. The song has been covered by a wide variety of artists over the years, ranging from Mott The Hoople in 1972 to the Sugarcubes in 1997. But it was Canada’s Cowboy Junkies who injected new life into the song with their hushed and reverent version from their lauded 1988 full-length, The Trinity Session. Based on the slower version of the song found on 1974’s 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, Lou Reed himself was taken with the remake, calling it “the best and most authentic version I have ever heard.” The Cowboy Junkies’ version also got a boost from being included on the soundtrack to 1994 Oliver Stone movie Natural Born Killers.